The Birth of Ann Doyle
by atmd888
Summary: My papers say Ann Doyle, to match the auburn tint and vaguely Irish lilt I've cultivated. It's an art, truly, teasing preferences and inclinations from those I've absorbed, sculpting disparate parts into a single cohesive personality.


It's always in Spring. There's something about the renewal of nature that makes me crave my own rebirth. Life starts closing in around me, and I know it's time to escape. The things I've acquired here are no longer the things I want. I need to shed this skin.

New city, new house, new clothes, new car. New York always beckons, but I'm through with the east coast. Too many memories are piling up here. This new self needs a place to call her own, where her past has never been. She needs to look around and know that she'll never have to see me or be me again.

-

-

Airports are my favorite places. The people here are dark and muted with their business suits, luggage, briefcases. Everyone is a stranger to everyone else. Ignore and be ignored; this is the unspoken code of airports. If only it applied universally.

The flight to Seattle is delayed. I don't mind. I sit and sip coffee and tap the laptop keys as if I'm doing something important. It's so much better than attempting small talk at work, wondering if I'm making too little eye contact or too much.

It's hard, pretending to be normal after people get close. They push and intrude and soon enough, vague replies no longer placate them. They chase me away. They. They. They. The nameless, faceless They, a wave crashing against my stony shore.

-

-

Now boarding. I have one carry-on and no checked luggage. Everything has been sold or discarded. The insecurity of arriving in a new city with nothing but an overnight bag is almost frightening. My amygdala sluggishly kicks into action, firing off along all the right synapses. Hormones and electricity; this is the proper potion for terror. So why can't I feel?

_Why can't I feel?_

-

-

Welcome to Seattle. Blue hallways, a maze of escalators. Now dodge the overeager cab drivers outside the terminal, and I'm free. I walk dark streets, unhurriedly browsing alleyways. Not a memory stirs within, not the faintest trace of familiarity—I discover for the first time this dumpster, that streetlamp, the taste of the damp, gritty air.

It's silent. A car alarm goes off two blocks away. Doors slam. Dogs bark. But inside my head, silence. None of the inhabitants rattle their cages. None exclaim their love for the café across the street, or turn my feet down well-remembered paths, or try to force my gaze this way or that.

Is this what life is like for other people? Is this how They feel all the time, fully awake and sovereign—unique beings interacting with other, separate beings?

I've always been a mess of loosely connected atoms, with no real beginning or end. Me, you, that, those: indistinguishable nullities passing by or through each other.

But now I'm _me_. Everything else is distinctly _other_. A smoker looks up from his doorstep, hungrily eyeing my laptop case. Danger. New. Unknown. It's enough. Just enough to stimulate even my overwrought, burned-out brain. I press two fingers to my wrist and my pulse has sped slightly.

It's almost like I'm real. Almost like I can feel. But novelty, like life, is no sooner conceived than it begins to age and die. With each step the feeling ebbs, until it is only another memory in a mind too full of memories.

-

-

Here is a hotel that I can't afford. I had planned to be poor, to find a shady inn on Sixth Avenue and then rent a studio fixer upper. But The Roosevelt with its green marble entry and solemn black bellhop is calling to me.

So plans change. I'm nothing if not versatile. I'll request funds from Charles. Or Erik. Each owes several favors I've yet to reclaim.

No, no reservation. A single, please. Sunset view. Yes, floor sixteen is fine. Now I curve my lips and squint my eyes in that way people always do, as if the muscle movements reveal something profound. Look at me, smiling. I must be sane and nonthreatening, because I can make my facial muscles twitch in a complicated pattern.

People mull about the lobby. What strange little things they are, strolling around, making conversation, living their lives as though it mattered. As though it had to matter. As though a notion to the contrary never even crossed their minds. They are movement and chaos and life. I'm as calm as the trees. I'm as lifeless as the rocks, the sand.

-

-

Elevator doors enclose me in walls made of mirrors. I hate mirrors; that never changes, no matter how many times I reinvent myself. I glare down and find that even the polished tile is reflective. I don't breathe until the carriage stops at the sixteenth floor, where I abandon the mirrors and hurry down the hall.

Breathe in two three four, hold two three four, out two three four. I unclench my jaw. I find the door, swipe the card, and slip inside.

-

-

A hot shower, a black silk nightshirt, and a steaming cup of chamomile. The last self favored coffee and blush wine, but I like fine teas and merlot. My papers say Ann Doyle, to match the auburn tint and vaguely Irish lilt I've cultivated. It's an art, truly, teasing preferences and inclinations from those I've absorbed, sculpting disparate parts into a single cohesive personality. My masterpiece.

My aesthetics tend towards minimalism for this incarnation. I haven't filled in too many details. Just a name, a look, the things a stranger must have. I'll decide in the morning whether I prefer marmalade or jam. I leave the empty mug on the bedside table and slide under the sheets.

-

-

There is a girl crouched in the center of a dark, filthy cage. Her head jerks up; she stares from sunken eyes. Her bones begin to rattle. She pulls handfuls of glass from her pockets and throws them on the floor. They shatter, shatter, shatter until broken glass is everywhere, my eyes my throat—I'm full of it, I'm made of it. I look down and see a thousand reflections staring back from broken glass, and now I'm falling, and I hit the ground and shatter into a thousand pieces.

I wake with a shuddering breath and turn on the lamp. I am Ann Doyle. I am Ann Doyle. There is no glass. There is no girl.

-

-

A hot shower, a black silk dress, and a steaming cup of Darjeeling. It's 4:17 AM in Seattle, but my accountant will be well into his workday in Zürich. I'll have him request the funds and wire enough to finance a month here at The Roosevelt.

I lift the receiver from its cradle and instruct the front desk to make an international call. The operator dials. I gulp my tea, forgetting to savor its taste. Food preferences can be finicky to ingrain. Sexual fetishes are impossible. The last self was a lingerie hound. As for me—who knows? Perhaps I'll find out.

A secretary answers. Steiner, please. Well, tell him it's Ms. D'Ancanto. I don't care; tell him. Thank you.

Henri Steiner says money can't buy happiness, but it can buy distraction from one's misery. He's managed my finances for as long as I've had finances to manage. He's discreet. He has no moral compass and a strong sense of self-preservation, which I think is charming

I've withdrawn nothing and taken no contracts in the last twelve months. Charles and Erik probably think I've dropped off the planet. My last self slipped into her life a little too thoroughly. She lived extravagantly for a paralegal's salary, but her nighttime activities kept her afloat.

The girlfriend experience baffles me no more or less than any other aspect of human behavior. Still, most of the women in Manhattan would be shocked to learn how much their husbands pay for escorts who can converse through a five-course dinner and enjoy _Il barbiere di Siviglia_ at the Met before going back to the hotel to fuck. It was one of my better career choices, really. Good to let the intelligentsia out to breathe sometimes. They tend to get restless in their cages. Suicidally restless, as the scars on my wrists can attest.

I think I'll be an artist in Seattle.

Oh, hello, Henri. On the west coast now, actually. You know me, never in one place too long. Yes, please, a transfer to an account under the name Ann Doyle . . . .

-

-

I make my way downstairs before sunrise. The concierge suggests a local restaurant for breakfast. He offers a map. I refuse, preferring to wander aimlessly.

There's a Starbucks on every corner in this city. It's essentially Manhattan with fewer billboards. Still, the air tastes different, and the buildings are a slightly grayer gray. Rain drizzles endlessly.

Yes, I could like it here.

-

-

I peruse the stalls at Pike Place Market. I could make abstract paintings. Or sculptures from scrap metal. I could do art made from trash. Here is a man who sells wallets made from tires. Here is a woman who sells gourd-head dolls.

Here is a man who draws charcoal portraits. A cage rattles; familiarity seeps through the bars. He looks like a man I killed, in Tulsa in 1972. I slipped a piece of broken glass into his neck and slid it across. Blood pooled beneath his skin, bulging oddly before bursting through the gash with his next heartbeat. Shaking the memory, I hurry away. Reflected in a car window is a girl's blood-spattered face—_No!_

I am Ann Doyle. I am Ann Doyle. There is no blood. There is no glass. There is no girl.

A woman touches my hand. I jump. What? No, fine, thank you. Just jet-lagged. Need some caffeine in my brain. Curved lips, squinted eyes.

-

-

I'm in the restroom at Starbucks, fixing my hair in the mirror. A girl peeks out from behind my reflection—just for a moment, then gone. Taunting me. Why? Why why why why do you follow me everywhere? You're gone, you're finished, you're dead, now leave me alone!

The cages begin to rattle, one after another after another, a deafening roar. I clamp my hands over my ears.

Marie.

My lips are sealed, but that doesn't stop the name escaping in my thoughts and reverberating between my ears. Noises clash and climb to a crescendo—I surrender.

I let her force my gaze to the mirror, let the ugly, weak girl stare back at me. Underfed little runaway with sunken brown eyes, dull and flat as old pennies. I grow nauseous as she looks her fill, tilts her head this way and that. Finally, she retreats. The rattling slows, slows, stops.

The woman in the mirror is a cold, cruel beauty.

I am Ann Doyle.

-

-

I'm pacing the floor in my hotel room. I'm spiraling. Isn't that what they call it, spiraling? Down down down into darkness. I forgot to watch the sunset. Wanting to watch the sunset seemed nice. It seemed like a good, normal thing to want. Why can't I want it?

It's okay. Rebirths are always difficult. I'll snap out of this. In a few hours it will only be a memory.

I will make screen-printed tee shirts with witty sayings and silhouettes of the Seattle skyline. I will sell them from a booth in Pike Place Market and have lunch at the docks every day with my eco-hippie boyfriend.

I see something in my peripheral vision. Who's that girl, huddled in the corner? My footsteps crunch on broken glass—_No!_

This isn't the way it's supposed to be. My masterpiece. Ann doesn't think about things like blood or shattered glass or girls with sunken eyes. Ann just wants to make art and smoke pot and screw her eco-hippie boyfriend on the floor of her studio apartment. Ann wants to watch the sunset and feel a thing like happy or sad or awed by its beauty.

I wish I were Ann Doyle.

-

-

The sun has long set. I'm still pacing the floor of my hotel room. I can't decide whether to go out to eat or to kill someone or to kill myself. I open the laptop, tap the keys. The money has been wired. Henri Steiner is a reliable and efficient worker. If I were capable of liking people, I would like Henri.

But I'm not capable anymore. My mind has begun to sputter and spark, an outlet with too many cables plugged in. Over the years, I have deteriorated. Sometimes I spend days in near catatonia. I feel nothing. I can touch. _Why can't I feel?_

-

-

I have decided to go out to eat. I can hold Ann together, though she is marred. A ripped canvas, a crumbling statue, a half-conceived poem. No masterpiece. Tomorrow I will probably kill myself and start over, but I've already put down this night at The Roosevelt, so I may as well use it.

The hostess seats me at a quiet corner table. My server is an attractive, crisply attired young man who thinks he is charming. He flirts with me and I refrain from stabbing him with my table knife. Curved lips, squinted eyes. I'll have the lamb, please, with the Cuvée Alexandre. No, not a glass, a bottle.

-

-

The lamb was excellent, the wine above average. Now I'm drowsy and intoxicated. This is fine, because I've paid the chauffeur to wait outside while I eat. I have more money than I can hope to waste in one night, but that doesn't mean I won't try.

I slide into the backseat, somewhat annoyed that he didn't come around to get the door for me. I latch onto the emotion, twist it this way and that to admire, like some long-lost treasure from the sea. Annoyance. Remarkable.

Wait. Am I really feeling this? When did I become a snob? I quickly survey my mind, a librarian scanning shelves. My own perverse Dewey decimal system. Ah. Emma has escaped, again. Bitch. That explains the overpriced wine as well.

I find her, grab her by the neck, and hurl her back into the cage with an elbow to the ribs for good measure. Have to run a tight ship, in here. It's the only way to keep order. Give them an inch, they'll take a goddamned mile.

I realize the car hasn't moved. Sir, back to the hotel, please.

"Yours or mine?"

-

-

That voice slices through the haze, penetrates me in a way nothing has for so long. Intoxication, annoyance, and now that voice. It's almost real. The catatonia recedes, like a tide rolling back to sea. I almost feel—something. "What do you want?" My own voice sounds crisp, like I'm hearing it from right here rather than somewhere deep inside my head.

He doesn't answer. He turns the key in the ignition, the engine purrs and we slip into traffic. The Roosevelt is in the opposite direction. I try the door. Useless. The lock has been shaved down. He's thorough.

"What did you do to the driver?"

"Borrowed his hat," he replies, tossing the cap in the passenger seat to reveal slicked blue-black hair. We pull into a lot only a block away. A Sixth Avenue inn. How fitting.

"What do you want?" I repeat.

He turns to face me, scratches his jaw thoughtfully. "Aside from the obvious? Got a job, need a crew. K&R, Singapore. Could get messy."

"She can't, Logan."

"Client's an oil exec. Name your price."

"It's not about money."

"It's always about money."

He's making me angry. I can hardly believe it. "She hasn't taken a contract in twelve months."

"Quit with the bullshit. You're her. You're Rogue. Lose that fucking accent."

"It's not that simple." But I tone down the brogue, a little. "Even Rogue can't play puppet master anymore. We all have to come out sometimes, incorporate pieces of ourselves into the master personality. Otherwise we start to surface uncontrollably. This incarnation is called Ann Doyle."

"Nice to meet you, Ann Doyle." His tone is anything but nice. "Now what'll it take to get you on a plane to Singapore?"

Impatience creeps into my voice. The brogue slips further. "Who do you want? A translator? Ex-special ops? A Nobel fucking physicist, 'cause I've got one."

"I want you."

"There's no such thing."

He punches the seat. "You should be jumping at this. It's good money. Better than whoring yourself around New York."

I feel pain. It's exquisite. I want more of it, want to create it in him too. "We didn't do that for the money. You still love her, don't you? She's dead, Logan; you know that."

He looks like he wants to strangle me. "Marie wouldn't stand for you using her body like that. Rogue or Ann or whoever the hell you are. I'm starting to think I oughta do her a favor, put that body in the ground where it belongs."

My eyes narrow. "You don't have it in you. You'd have done it by now. But don't worry; there have been two suicide attempts recently." I flash my scarred wrists, eliciting a snarl of surprise. "It's bound to happen soon with or without your help."

"Why won't you take the job?" he asks tightly. "I could use you on this."

"No, you couldn't. We're—I'm fucked. My head's messed up, and getting worse." I don't know why I'm telling him this.

He grips my shoulders. "Maybe if you hadn't started collecting them like dolls—thought you could just line them up in there and choose which one to play with, huh? You're a fucking idiot. You destroyed her."

"Yeah, well." I can't argue with that.

"Yeah, well," he mocks. His grip tightens painfully, and I can tell he wants to shake me—but he doesn't. He lets go, digs the heels of his palms into his eyes. "I hate you," he whispers fiercely.

The darkest, filthiest cage is rattling. Hinges strain as a weak, ugly girl slams her body against the door repeatedly. She shrieks and begs, screams his name.

She's dead. Or may as well be. I'll never let her out again.

-

-

Three knives rip through his knuckles. He stares at his hand as though it belongs to someone else, watches its slow progress as a blunted edge drives toward my neck, connects, and presses. Before he can break the skin, his breath abandons him in a shaky rush.

Contact, then the slide, smooth as satin. A molten hot caress. The sensation at my neck pulls an answering pang from the soles of my feet. I flash back to Mississippi summers, walking barefoot on a tin roof in the sun.

A sting, a buzz, spreading up and down and through, exciting neurons I had thought long fizzled out. An unfamiliar longing wakes inside me, something primal, more ancient than I can comprehend. "I'm only two days old."

His free hand flies blindly to the rearview mirror, tilts it at me. "You don't look it."

I avert my gaze, but not quickly enough. She rises, no more than a grotesque flicker, weak and pathetic, before I shove her down down down into darkness.

He looks as though he's seen a ghost. His nostrils flare; scorching metal bares down on my windpipe. "What was that?" A baleful growl. His head tilts to the side, examining me. "For a second you were . . . almost beautiful."

-

-

"Marie, forgive me," he murmurs as he drags me to his room.

I'm unsteady on black stilettos, drunken footsteps landing too heavily for the delicate heels. He braces me, one hand slithering round my waist and fisting in the black silk dress. It rises dangerously up my thighs. A wave of sensation spreads from the brush of silk, the heat of his hand, something sharp and sweet. Like blackberry wine. Fourth of July, we drank it straight from the bottle at the riverside. Staring up at the fireworks, I thought the day couldn't get any more perfect, until he leaned over and kissed me—_No!_

Those are not my memories. I am Ann Doyle. I am Ann Doyle.

Shameful longing. I can't tell whether I feel it myself or am simply mirroring him. I don't care anymore. As long as the feeling stays. It has to; he exudes raw strength, enough to push a tide back to sea.

-

-

He shoves me into the room, not bothering to flip the switch or fling up the Do Not Disturb sign. I stumble, and he looms behind me, breathing heavily in the dark silence. I am dumbstruck when his hands find my shoulders once more, slipping under the straps to brush bare skin. A wave of feelings crashes down, pulling me into the undertow. Suicidal, I'm drowning and have no desire to surface for air.

He is shaking; his fingers tremble with the effort of control. Restraint: I can break him of that. I lean back, press myself against him fully, and the shaking stops. My entire body thrums; I feel against my back the rumble in his chest, growing louder as his arms encircle me possessively.

He dips down and buries his face in the crook of my neck, palms flattening over my stomach to pull me into him. So hot, his hands; they burn, and for a moment I try to step away. He jerks me back with a deep growl. His chest rises as he breathes me in, and his hands depart my stomach in opposite directions—one up to palm my breast, the other down to cup me and grind the small of my back into his hardness. His mouth closes down on my neck, marking me.

I gasp; my legs give out. He holds my weight easily, continuing his task. I think I have found my fetish.

-

-

The pleasure has given way to pain, but he refuses to relent, mouth still clamped to the hollow beneath my ear. He marches us forward blindly. A light comes on. He centers us before the mirror. I squint and shy away, trying to turn in his arms, but he will have none of it.

He grips my hair and tilts my head up, baring my neck. "Look," he growls in my ear.

"Please, I don't—"

"_Look_." His grip tightens.

I open my eyes, catch sight of the mark blossoming on my neck. Something uncoils in the pit of my stomach, spreading a flush over my skin.

He smiles bitterly. "She loved that. Knowing she was mine." He lets go of my hair, strips off his shirt. He gestures carelessly at me. I'm not sure what that means, until he growls, "Take it off, unless you want it shredded on the floor."

I reach between my shoulderblades, catch the zipper and inch it down. His hips buck at the sound, and he groans, scrabbling with his belt buckle. I stare into the mirror, carefully avoiding my own gaze. I watch him watch me, and through his eyes see myself more clearly than I ever could. Desire and hate, love and rage; how flattering to know I could drive him to this, idolatry.

So starved for his goddess, he'll worship even this hollow perversion of her.

-

-

"No." His hand grips my chin, forces my gaze back to the mirror. He grins wickedly, and I see something predatory arise in him. "You have to watch." He traces down the column of my neck, feather-light, then palms my breast roughly. Rougher than he would have been with her, I know. "I want you to see what you stole from me."

I pretend to look at myself. "I'm beyond guilt."

His grin widens, cruel and feral. "So am I."

I repay his harsh entry by raking my nails up his thighs. Far away, someone cries out. Is that my voice? I suppose it is. My breaths come to match his movements, each one entering a gasp, exiting a little sob of bliss.

He nearly thrusts me off my feet, and my hands come up against the wall on either side of the mirror, bracing myself. His hands cover mine, and he sinks his teeth into my shoulder, bending us both forward to get a deeper angle. He speeds up until my sobs sharpen into a low keen. He grunts and growls incoherently, sounds reverberating through my skin.

He has bottomed out, but doesn't seem to care as he continues pistoning his hips. I let my features contort in the mirror, beyond caring when the ugliness slips through. All I feel is him, inside and out, flooding my heart's chambers, pumping through my delicate framework, like a toxin and a cure rolled up in one. Constantly, those contorted cries, then _Oh!_, the surprise sliding across my features, twitching here, tensing there, as I claim the voice for my own. The face, my own.

Ann Doyle. I coalesce, solidify with this man inside me. He makes me real. He makes me feel.

"Turn it on," he growls, voice barely human, thrusts verging on painful. He's too big for me. I wonder how he and Marie—

"Turn it on," he demands again.

"I don't—ah!—I—oh God—why?"

His eyes are dark on mine. He thrusts deep and stays, rocking against me. "I wanna get inside. All the way. Let me in."

I can't think. I don't know what to say. "Y-you'll fall on me," I stutter. He pulls out. "Oh no, please, please," I beg. He can't leave me this way.

He spins me around and crashes his mouth down on mine. The kiss is crude, movements of his tongue mimicking his thrusts as he enters me again. He crushes me to him, heat radiating from his body into mine. Then I am opening under him, twining my fingers through his hair, letting him in deeper. My thighs wrap around him, and he grips my ass to hold me up.

I don't notice that he's moved us until he collapses backwards on the bed with me on top. I start to grind down on him, to sit up and take control, but he refuses to release me, one hand at the back of my neck as his tongue explores the roof of my mouth. I moan, settling on him, and am rewarded when he starts to thrust again, steady and deep, rolling his hips in a way that presses my walls and eases him further in.

He fists a hand in my hair and pulls my head back, dragging his teeth over my lower lip. He hisses, and I feel hot metal at my neck. His hips keep their steady pace like it's out of his conscious control. Pain and danger and sex. I feel high. The metal tests my pulse. "Turn it on or I'll make you turn it on."

I grind down on him. "I won't be able to stop. I'll take it all," I mutter breathlessly.

"I know."

He knows. I gaze down at his harsh, handsome face. My first willing victim. I close my mouth over his, taking control of the kiss this time. He continues rutting into me, movements growing jerky as I clench around him. His hands tighten on me insistently.

I let the tension build until his thrusts become erratic. I turn on my skin and find my own release in his, arching my back and plummeting, a glorious descent into darkness.

-

-

Logan's body is an empty husk. I had to harness Juggernaut's strength to dispose of it, which is always risky. But this self is strong now; I can hold my own. I weighed his body and sank it in the harbor. His heart was still beating. I wonder if it will ever stop.

I have rented a studio apartment and a stall in Pike Place Market. Shane helped me set up my screen printer, and I have designed several templates already. I begin sales soon.

Logan was enraged at first, to discover that Marie still existed. But I managed to quiet him: they stay in the same cage now. They wailed and rattled the bars and made more trouble than they were worth, so I finally let them be together. As long as the others don't find out, I should be able to keep order.

I sip my Darjeeling, savoring its aroma as I welcome sunrise over the harbor. A stunning view. It's why I chose this place. The glittering ocean, the seagulls, the cars and pedestrians zipping by—it makes me feel alive.

They whisper to each other, a constant susurration at the edge of my awareness, Logan and Marie. They relive memories, console each other, make love when they think I won't notice. They are planning mutiny.

Let them try. Rebirths are always difficult, but I have brought myself into being, and only I will take myself out. I am Ann Doyle. My life has just begun.


End file.
